My 7 Favorite People From the Year in Culture

3.  Todd Phillips

When doing an interview tied to a junket (in this case, Due Date) sometimes the most that an interviewer can hope for is that something, anything, that sets his or her conversation apart from the monotony of the interview subject's day. Todd Phillips, who started the interview by coming out swinging, at least provided the uniqueness:

Thanks for taking the time to do this.

This is for Movieline?

Yes.

This Web site's the worst, but, all right, let's do it.

Oh, no. Why do you say that?

No, honestly, I'm teasing, but you guys just hate every movie. So it's like, "Ugh, really, I have to do this and open myself up to some snarky, clever title?" You know what I mean? There are movie sites that love movies and there are movie sites that are just bitter people that just hate movies. I find Movieline to be in the latter. The tone is bizarrely hateful.

Really? I wouldn't call it hateful at all.

In print. You're right, in person I've only had great experiences with [the writers]. And I'm not even talking about my own personal things, I'm saying that when I go on that site and read about other movies, it just seems like one of those sites.

4. James Cameron

It was an innocent question, really: At the time of this interview James Cameron was promoting the re-release of Avatar which, kind of coincidentally, was going to head-to-head at the box-office with Piranha 3D. Cameron's first credit as a director was a movie called Piranha 2: The Spawning, so I thought it would be fun to ask him if he feels any nostalgia toward the Piranha franchise. His answer below caused a minor sh*t storm after the producer of Piranha 3D decided to respond with a 1,400 word manifesto:

"I tend almost never to throw other films under the bus, but [Piranha 3D] is exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3-D. Because it just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3-D horror films from the 70s and 80s, like Friday the 13th 3-D. When movies got to the bottom of the barrel of their creativity and at the last gasp of their financial lifespan, they did a 3-D version to get the last few drops of blood out of the turnip."

5. Evangeline Lilly

This was part of a series that I was doing where I interviewed a Lost cast member each week during the recent final season. Everyone in the cast was pleasant enough, but what made Lilly stand out was how she didn't at all try to hide the fact that she was quite pleased that Lost was over. She was especially pleased that she no longer had to ask permission to, as she says, make adult decisions:

"Yeah, it's like having to ask the teacher to go to the bathroom in class. It's like, 'OK, that's the most natural thing in the world, shouldn't I just be able to go?' And that's sort of how it is on our show. There is this feeling -- not a feeling, but a literal rule -- that, in order to leave the island, we have to have permission from our elders -- from our producers. And it would be nice to be an adult and have control of my life again and make those basic decisions on my own."

6. James Franco

This marks the only time that I can remember an interview subject extending an interview at a junket because he had a few things about a subject that he wanted to say that would go well beyond our original allotted time. The question was if he felt the media was fair to him, and clearly he had been thinking about the subject:

"So, things like a picture of me sleeping in class? What am I going to do? It actually wasn't class; William Kentridge was giving a talk that I didn't need to be at. It's kind of OK with me because I think it's very hard for people. People don't want the guy from Pineapple Express to be going to Yale and getting a Ph. D. They don't like it. I think people just want to... If they can't get pictures of me drunk coming out of a club, the worst they can get of me is sleeping in a 10 p.m. lecture. OK. If they want to paint the picture of the stoner going to school, it's kind of OK with me because it actually takes a lot of pressure off. If that's the way they want to depict me, it's fine. Because my schoolwork isn't a performance. I'm going there because I'm getting so much out of it and I'm getting to work with all of my favorite writers or professors. So if that's how they want to depict it, it's not taking away from why I'm there. And it takes pressure off. So you kind of have to roll with it."

7.  Anthony Hopkins 

Hopkins called me about an hour early, so I wasn't quite expecting him when I answered. And I certainly wasn't expecting him to simply introduce himself as "Tony." Regardless, the movie he was promoting was the forgettable-enough Wolfman and for some reason the topic shifted to, of all things, Raiders of the Lost Ark (and why action movies today aren't quite as good). Which led to one of those weird, self-aware moments where, as it's happening, all I could think was I'm discussing Raiders of the Lost Ark with Sir Anthony Hopkins. Wait, I'm sorry, Tony Hopkins:

"Well, yeah. I don't think there's any social significance in it, but I think it's a market for kids that are so multitasked, now, that I don't think anyone thinks anymore. Raiders of the Lost Ark is a good example of the spirit that lets the story unfold. You see all the action, you see everything happen. There's moments you see this and you see that, and think this is great, and you're pulled in with Harrison Ford's adventures. Or Silence of the Lambs or something like The Shining -- when Jack Nicholson's being interviewed in the hotel, the camera doesn't move at all. It keeps you on the edge of your seat. But now, I don't know what's going on and I don't care."

Pages: 1 2